Social Competitiveness and Plasticity of Neuroendocrine Function in Old Age: Influence of Neonatal Novelty Exposure and Maternal Care Reliability

Early experience is known to have a profound impact on brain and behavioral function later in life. Relatively few studies, however, have examined whether the effects of early experience remain detectable in the aging animal. Here, we examined the effects of neonatal novelty exposure, an early stimulation procedure, on late senescent rats' ability to win in social competition. During the first 3 weeks of life, half of each litter received daily 3-min exposures to a novel environment while the other half stayed in the home cage. At 24 months of age, pairs of rats competed against each other for exclusive access to chocolate rewards. We found that novelty-exposed rats won more rewards than home-staying rats, indicating that early experience exerts a life-long effect on this aspect of social dominance. Furthermore, novelty-exposed but not home-staying rats exhibited habituation of corticosterone release across repeated days of social competition testing, suggesting that early experience permanently enhances plasticity of the stress response system. Finally, we report a surprising finding that across individual rat families, greater effects of neonatal novelty exposure on stress response plasticity were found among families whose dams provided more reliable, instead of a greater total quantity of, maternal care

RICORS2040 : The need for collaborative research in chronic kidney disease

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a silent and poorly known killer. The current concept of CKD is relatively young and uptake by the public, physicians and health authorities is not widespread. Physicians still confuse CKD with chronic kidney insufficiency or failure. For the wider public and health authorities, CKD evokes kidney replacement therapy (KRT). In Spain, the prevalence of KRT is 0.13%. Thus health authorities may consider CKD a non-issue: very few persons eventually need KRT and, for those in whom kidneys fail, the problem is 'solved' by dialysis or kidney transplantation. However, KRT is the tip of the iceberg in the burden of CKD. The main burden of CKD is accelerated ageing and premature death. The cut-off points for kidney function and kidney damage indexes that define CKD also mark an increased risk for all-cause premature death. CKD is the most prevalent risk factor for lethal coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the factor that most increases the risk of death in COVID-19, after old age. Men and women undergoing KRT still have an annual mortality that is 10- to 100-fold higher than similar-age peers, and life expectancy is shortened by ~40 years for young persons on dialysis and by 15 years for young persons with a functioning kidney graft. CKD is expected to become the fifth greatest global cause of death by 2040 and the second greatest cause of death in Spain before the end of the century, a time when one in four Spaniards will have CKD. However, by 2022, CKD will become the only top-15 global predicted cause of death that is not supported by a dedicated well-funded Centres for Biomedical Research (CIBER) network structure in Spain. Realizing the underestimation of the CKD burden of disease by health authorities, the Decade of the Kidney initiative for 2020-2030 was launched by the American Association of Kidney Patients and the European Kidney Health Alliance. Leading Spanish kidney researchers grouped in the kidney collaborative research network Red de Investigación Renal have now applied for the Redes de Investigación Cooperativa Orientadas a Resultados en Salud (RICORS) call for collaborative research in Spain with the support of the Spanish Society of Nephrology, Federación Nacional de Asociaciones para la Lucha Contra las Enfermedades del Riñón and ONT: RICORS2040 aims to prevent the dire predictions for the global 2040 burden of CKD from becoming true

Measuring and Explaining Total Factor Productivity (TFP) Growth and Patterns in Philippine Agriculture: A Regional Panel Data Framework

The first part of the study attempts to estimate the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth in Philippine agriculture using the productivity measurement procedure proposed by Dumagan and Ball (2008). Employing the superlative Törnqvist index, their technique works directly with the observed nominal values of revenues, decomposing growth in revenues into output price and output quantity growth, and then decomposing the latter into input quantity growth and a residual term representing TFP growth. The second part investigates the determinants of agricultural productivity using the panel data analytic models such as the constant coefficients, the fixed effects, and the random effects model. Applying the technique to Philippine agriculture, the growth in output prices contributed on the average 7.55 percentage points (pct.pts.) to revenue growth of 10.71 percent for the entire period. This is significantly higher than the average contribution of the growth in output quantities of 3.16 pct. pts. For the output quantity decomposition, input quantities and TFP contributed 0.97 and 2.19 pct. pts., respectively. This reveals that output growth in Philippine agriculture has been mainly driven by productivity. The panel data analysis substantiates the importance of roads, rural electrification, and research and development to enhance agricultural productivity. Overall, this study recommends to examine further the role of output prices in determining farm incomes and undertake initiatives to boost agricultural productivity through investments in infrastructure and research and development

An Empirical Analysis of Productivity in Philippine Agriculture, 1974-2000

Using recent agricultural data sets, we estimate a non-neutral and non-homothetic translog variable cost function to empirically investigate Philippine agricultural productivity. Overall, the annual average productivity growth rate is 0.51 percent. The highest productivity level is observed during the post-Green Revolution period (1974-1980). Thereafter, productivity growth shows a discernible decline up until the late 1990s. This indicates that productivity level during the Green Revolution era has not been sustained or paralleled, despite substantial policy changes put in place since 1986 to invigorate the agricultural sector. The government should therefore continue to promote technological progress in Philippine agriculture; however, this may require redirection of its present policy by placing more emphasis on productivity-enhancing investments, such as research and development, irrigation and other infrastructure. Copyright 2004 East Asian Economic Association.

Feature driven development of a smartphone based vision-aware mhealth framework

Mobile health (mHealth) applications attempt to capitalize on the ubiquity and exponential growth of mobile technologies for the benefit of public health, leading to a growing research interest in devising frameworks for addressing specific or general mHealth challenges. In this context, the primary goal of this study is to present a novel smartphone-based development framework for prototyping vision-aware native mHealth applications developed using Feature Driven Development (FDD) methodology. Then, we describe a prototype mHealth educational application, \u27Dibdib\u27* * Advocacy App for breast cancer awareness, utilizing the proposed vision-aware mHealth framework in Android platform. The results illustrate that FDD is feasible option in mHealth application development under the proposed mHealth framework. © Medwell Journals, 2017

Characterizing the high breast cancer incidence in Bacolod City, Philippines

This paper characterizes the high incidence of breast cancer in Bacolod City, Philippines. The methods of research involved (1) an epidemiological study; (2) a determination study on the environmental factors that cause breast cancer; and (3) a breast cancer behavioral study. A statistical analysis of the personal demography profile found significant indicators of the presence or absence of breast cancer in the areas of breastfeeding duration (p = 0.0029), age when they experienced first sexual intercourse (p = 0.0449), cancer cases in the family (p \u3c 0.0001), incidence of smoking (p = 0.0322), and occupation (p \u3c 0.0001). From an environmental perspective, data obtained from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Region 6 showed nothing of suspect. The sociological dimension found a correlation between stress and the presence or vulnerability of patients and their families to breast cancer incidences. The study likewise found that the women in the study incorporated a range of attitude and behavior that directly and indirectly aim to manage the strains of home and office works revolving around the confluence of (i) faith, (ii) their family, and (iii) and anticipated future. The study promotes the creation of breast cancer support groups as they present a positive and viable mechanism within the community to create social awareness about breast cancer and foster genuine social support networks for its members and their families as well as promote initiatives for low-income members to obtain medicines, referrals, and information. Investing in counseling for the survivors and their families leads to stress management and increased awareness about self-examination, increasing the probability of early detection. Overall, this study can serve as an important document that could be used by government agencies in drawing up screening as well as treatment and management programs for breast cancer in the Philippines. © 2019 by De La Salle University